By: Banks Rafool and Marley Reid
Favoring the cheaper three-drug protocol over the more commonly used pentobarbital, the committee prioritizes cost savings at the potential expense of increased suffering, raising ethical questions about justice and cruelty.
With the recent passage of the Rapist and Repeaters Enforcement Act (R.A.R.E.), Jim Jordan, Congressman from Ohio, worked alongside his bipartisan team to extend the death penalty to repeat offenders of rape. The bill faced little opposition from amendments and acted as a bipartisan regulation to an already-in-place standard; as he stated, "getting rid of the Death Penalty will not work."
In Section 2 of their bill, Jim Jordan and team introduced a different injection used for death row cases: an older three-drug protocol. Although this drug is a cheaper alternative to lethal injection, this three-drug method is commonly known to be a more excruciating type of lethal injection, which raises ethical concerns among citizens. In a direct quote, Congressman Jordan states “Money was a primary concern in gathering support behind this bill.” Is this difference in price worth the agony caused by this three-drug protocol?
The more common method of pentobarbital costs on average $20,000 per execution. Meanwhile, the older method costs roughly $1,500 across the three different drugs used.
In 2014, the state of Oklahoma, renowned for its long-standing use of the death penalty, injected Micheal Lee Wilson with a three-drug process. In the final moments of his life and the culmination of all his regrets and mistakes up to that point, he was quoted saying, “I feel my whole body burning.”
Many are left wondering, is it ethical to undermine the feelings of those on death row despite the 8th Amendment's assurance that all those charged are not given cruel or unusual punishments?